Michael Kane is representing Colorado Springs with a nomination for his work as Blunt in TheatreWorks’ comedy, “The Lying Kind.”

Awards are inherently hurtful. First there’s the nomination process, which is naturally disappointing to anyone who isn’t chosen. And for those few you are able to single out with a nomination, guess what? Eighty percent of them aren’t going to win.

So why do them at all? I think it’s important to chronicle the year, to create a permanent archive of what one news organization considers the best work of the year in Colorado theater. I also love the dialogue they create — the congratulations, the carping, all of it is conversation at the end of the year that reminds us one last time of what a great year it was. And none of it would be happening right now if not for these awards. Read more…

Last year, actor Natalie Jensen gathered 36 members of the local theater community for a remarkable and uplifting benefit concert that raised more than $6,500 split between the Susan G. Komen breast-cancer foundation and the Pikes Peak Region Peace Officers’ Memorial.

Jensen’s husband, Jared Jensen, was a Colorado Springs police officer killed in the line of duty at age 30.

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.